But It’s Good for the Economy!

History tells us that nothing will fuck up a great power more completely than being in a perpetual state of war, but don’t tell that shit to the libertarians. In their eyes, war — much like cancer — is a boon to mankind due to the new markets it opens up.

Sure, war means jobs, but are they good jobs? You betcha, they are. Get your application in by tomorrow’s deadline and you too could be a Personal Effects Specialist in the employ of war profiteer Serco. Just look at that job description:

Receives, inventories, sorts, cleans, photographs, packages, and ships to family members (next of kin) all personal effects belonging to military service members and others, including defense contractors, who are killed or severely injured worldwide, especially incident to military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Performs other relevant administrative and logistics duties as assigned which may include data entry (Defense Casualty Information Processing System) and reports and correspondence management functions, as necessary.

Tomorrow morning I’ll probably go back to my usual state of being enraged that the Iraq war ever happened in the first place. For now, though, I’m equally enraged that we’ve privatized so much of our armed services that they can do goddamn near nothing in-house anymore. Private corporations do it all, up to and including the shit described above.

Comments

Are you some kind of idiot? Where the hell have libertarians ever said anything of the sort?! Libertarians will be the first to say precisely the opposite! War is not good for the economy. It is the liberals who say that. Their shining example is Roosevelt’s WWII, though it is fallacy.

No libertarian would ever say that. If they did, they aren’t libertarian.

And privatizing the armed forces? Great idea! So many jobs in the military are so specialized, you can’t have an army of people who peel potatoes one day, fix an engine the next, etc. The demands are too great, the jobs are highly technical and specialized, and there simply isn’t the manpower to have an army of jacks-of-all-trades. So you outsource jobs like food prep. Simple to me. Can’t do it all in-house anymore. This isn’t 1940.

Well, yeah. I have yet to meet the person who isn’t some kind of idiot.

No libertarian would ever say that. If they did, they aren’t libertarian.

That’s a valuable statement right there. We all know that the No True Scotsman fallacy isn’t the sole prerogative of evangelical Protestants, but periodic reminders of that truth are eminently worthwhile.